


to live without a lifeline

by transtlanticism



Category: Project Nemesis Series - Brendan Reichs
Genre: Anyway here's my garbage, Canon Compliant, Gen, during those long chapters where tack was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND, i had this idea of tack and the guardian hanging out, they must have talked about min right, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 00:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18304853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transtlanticism/pseuds/transtlanticism
Summary: Set during Chrysalis. Tack and the Guardian, hiding from Chrysalis personnel together, can't ignore the one thing they have in common: Min.





	to live without a lifeline

_I did everything wrong._

It’s the opposite of the mantra that’s been looping in my head for four months. _I did everything right. I did everything right, and I still lost._

_I lost the Program. I lost the war with Chrysalis. I lost Min._

Now I know why—it’s because I did everything wrong. 

The Guardian sits in the corner, his head slumped against the wall. He looks defeated, more than I’ve ever seen him. I recognize the expression—it’s one that Min wore all the time in the Program. The same line on their foreheads, the way they flick their eyes to both sides, like they’re constantly on the lookout. I’d thought it was a product of her childhood. I hadn’t realized it was hereditary. 

He looks up, and sees me watching him. I turn my head. 

“Thomas.”

I glance back at him. 

“Thomas, right?”

I scratch the back of my neck. “It’s, uh, Tack. Actually. Don’t know if your professional files told you that.”

His lips twitch. “Min did, actually. When she was chewing me out for letting you die. She told me you were her best friend.”

There’s no lie in the sentence, but I want to punch something. “That’s me.” 

“Tell me about her.”

I look up, wondering if this is a trap, but there’s nothing in his gaze but curiosity. I tug on my loose shoelaces, trying to figure out how to answer. 

What do I say? Do I list off my favorite things about her? Do I recite her music library? Do I tell him about the time she blew up Ethan’s car because he stomped on my hand?

And who’s to say how much he already knows about her? He’s been surveilling her since she was six years old. Killing her every other birthday. 

What am I supposed to say to Min’s murderer when he finally wants to know who he’s been murdering?

“She’s....” My eyes stray to the far door. We’re almost positive that no Chrysalis personnel know where we are, but no one is guaranteeing that fact. “She’s smart.”

His voice is laced with amusement. “That’s it?”

“She’s so serious. Noble, and brave, and all that horseshit. She likes reading. She’s weirdly strong.” So it’s going to be the list after all. “She’s pretty, but she hates it when anyone points it out. She’s aloof, and kind of cold, but loyal as hell. When she cares about someone, she makes it a point to care about them.” 

“Thomas, you could be describing anyone,” he interrupts. “Tell me something real. Something about her specifically.”

I hesitate, because it almost feels like a betrayal. I don’t know what Min wants her father to know about her. But this guy clearly wants some intel, and there’s nowhere to go to avoid him, so...what else can I do?

“She hates math,” I say, “and loves Vampire Weekend. She always wears the same black sneakers. She has that ‘I’m-not-like-other-girls’ complex, but just because most of the other girls in our grade are awful. If she grew up with normal girls, she’d be friends with them. And...” I shift my weight. “Away from you, of course.” 

He ducks his head ever so slightly. “Of course”.

“She’s always stealing my pencils and losing them,” I say, “but I’m always borrowing her phone charger and forgetting to give it back.” I can’t stop talking now. It’s like a torrent of memories I’ve pushed away after I left Home Town. “She always wanted to grow her hair out, but Virginia liked it short.”

The guy practically jerks backward. Right. Shit. Forgot about that whole thing. _Yikes_. 

“She was always doing stupid shit,” I recall. “Stupidly brave. When we were twelve, we lit fireworks off Tip-Top Grove, nearly burned the place down. Fourteen, she jumped into the lake on a dare and nearly got hypothermia. That same year, she got sick of Toby cheating off her tests, so she poured water on his computer when no one was looking. Sixteen, she set fire to Ethan’s car and broke into her psychiatrist’s office. _And_ made us investigate secret government property in the middle of the night, which nearly got me killed.” I pause to catch my breath. “All her ideas.”

The Guardian’s mouth is hanging open. “But...she…”

“Like I said. Stupidly brave.”

He shakes his head once. “You didn’t try to rein her in?”

I snort. “Min on a rampage is like a hurricane. You just try to stay in the eye of it, or it’ll take you out, too.” 

He mutters something about Virginia and parenting skills under his breath. 

“Hey,” I point out, “she won this whole thing, didn’t she? Even convinced you to abandon everything you ever fought for to help her.” I meet his eye. “That’s the type of person Min is. That’s your daughter. That’s what you missed out on.” 

…

“So, you’re in love with Min?”

The Guardian has only left once, to get food—I still don’t know how he manages this whole _hiding on a space station_ thing, don’t ask me where—and I suddenly wish he was still gone. 

Also, I really need to stop thinking of him by his Program title. What’s his name again? Starts with a J. Jackass? Juvenile Murderer? Jumps Into Min’s Life When She Least Needs Him? (I know his name. But only because it’s Min’s middle name. This dude is completely irrelevant in my life, except for the fact that he’s my only company on this godforsaken space station.)

I take a giant bite of my rehydrated pasta. “What makes you think that?” 

“It’s not a secret,” he says, amused. “You shot yourself in the head because you love her.”

I take another bite. Chew it for an unreasonably long amount of time before swallowing. “She’s my best friend,” I say evasively. “My job is to sacrifice myself for her. My feelings don’t factor in.”

“Really,” he says. “So you haven’t spoken to her in four months because she’s your best friend and your feelings for her don’t factor in.”

_Can he shut up?_ “I’ve been about three feet from her my entire life. A little space is healthy.”

He actually laughs, a short, dry bark. “They said you were blunt, Thomas.”

“For the last time,” I remind him, “it’s Tack. Also? You’re her father. You don’t really need to know about her love life.”

He tilts his head, regarding me with gray-green eyes. Not quite Min’s eyes. A little lighter. The dark hair is the same, but his is cut short against his scalp. I have to wonder how he manages to look perfectly neat and organized as a fugitive on a space station. Aside from the ugly gray Chrysalis jumpsuit, obviously. “What love life?”

Ouch. “Cold.”

He chuckles. “Believe me, it’s obvious. You may as well talk to me about it.”

“Yeah, no.” I don’t do the whole chatting about emotions thing. “I love her, she loves Noah. There’s nothing more to it.” Short, curt, no room for a sob story. 

“You took off,” he says, and if I didn’t know better, I would say he sounds disappointed in me. “She needed you there.”

“She didn’t. She had Noah.”

He huffs. “She can have more than one person in her life.”

“How was I supposed to know?” I snap. “She had one parent and one friend, all through her life. Now she’s got Noah. She doesn’t need me. I don’t need her.”

“Don’t,” Juilliard says wearily. “Don’t pretend you don’t miss her.”

I cut him a glance. He looks wrapped up in his own thoughts. 

“Do you?” I hedge. He looks quizzically at me. “Miss her?”

“All the time.” He sounds exhausted. “I regret so much. I wish I could have watched her grow up, and not just from behind the barrel of a gun. I wish…”

I push soggy pasta around with my plastic fork. 

“In a different universe,” he says, “I’d have met you a long time ago.”

I set my fork down and lift my chin. “Would you do it all again?” I ask. “If you could start all over, would you do it this way again? The murders. The Program.”

He takes a long drink of his coffee. I’m afraid of his answer. Also, I really want some coffee.

“I don’t think I’d have the strength,” he finally admits. 

“Not even to save Min’s life?”

He looks at me. “What would you do differently, Tack?” 

I pick up the fork. Twist it between my fingers. I don't miss that he avoided the question. “Tried harder to get Min out of the silo. Not left her there with Sarah for two months.” Something else occurs to me, but I don’t say it. 

_I could have killed Noah before Min forgave him._

I banish the dark thought and run my mind through the Program. “Joining Noah’s team,” I say. “Killing…so many people.” I swallow. “I wouldn’t do that again.”

“I think Noah might say the same,” Juilliard notes gently. 

I stab at the pasta with my fork until it barely resembles food. I don’t want to talk about Noah. Or Min. 

But I miss Min so desperately. 

And shrugging her off the other day was so hard. 

But she’s off with Chrysalis now, getting trained. Doing whatever they do. Knowing her, she’ll have taken over the station by next week. I’ll still be here. Always the outlaw, always the cast-aside rule breaker. Because I ran. 

“You’ll see her again.” I think the bastard can read my mind because he has this horribly understanding look on his face. “You still have time to make it up to her.”

“Whatever,” I mutter, and attack my food. 

_I did everything wrong._

…

“This feels so ridiculous.”

He lifts his head. “What does?”

“This. Us talking about Min. Me befriending her worst nightmare.”

He runs a hand over his face. “I’m her father.”

“Yeah, but instead of child support, you paid in blood.”

He shoots me a look. I desist. A full five minutes pass in silence. 

“I didn’t enjoy it,” he says finally. “It was the worst five days of my life.” 

“I think Min and Noah might have had it worse.” A thought occurs to me. “Why didn’t you just hypnotize and kill her, like you did Sarah and Ethan?”

He leans forward and begins ticking off reasons. “Survival skills. Getting her used to resetting so that she understood the game. Additionally, once we started the killing program, we couldn’t change it.” He hesitates. “And I meant that I got to see her.”

“To chase her down and murder her!”

He winces. Doesn’t offer up any argument. Sick bastard. 

In a way, I wonder if this broke him as much as it did the rest of us. If not more. Which is all we need. The only adult we can rely on being a complete basket case. 

_Can_ we rely on him? I guess he’s all we’ve got. I certainly don’t trust anyone on Chrysalis. 

I don’t trust anyone, full stop. The sophomores of Fire Lake are a disaster. I’ve heard my classmates at the Outpost talk shit about Min one too many times. (And they’re the nice ones.) Ethan is a mess. Sarah is cruel and unpredictable. Noah’s in a class by himself. 

I don’t trust anyone except Min. And we’re not even speaking. 

Reliance is a broken concept. 

“Do you regret having a daughter at all?” I ask. I think it's a fair question.

He slides a piece of paper from the pocket of his jumpsuit. Unfolds it. “I should,” he says. “If I were half the person I want to be, I would regret it. But I can’t bring myself to wish she’d never been born.”

I crane my neck ever so slightly to see what he’s holding. The deliberate, heavy pencil strokes surprise me. Because they form a familiar face looking up at me from the torn piece of paper. 

The man’s an artist. I happen to know that Min can’t draw a straight line with the help of a ruler. But that’s definitely her. 

“You can draw?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. I guess I've only thought of him as skilled with…well, killing. Manipulating kids.

“Had to learn.” He tosses the paper down, and it spins on the table to face me. “Diagrams for the MegaCom. I took classes. They wanted us to draw people. So I did, and I never shook the habit.”

He pulls a sheaf of papers from his pocket, and I page through them. A few more of Min. Mostly people I don’t know. And one other face I do recognize.

I pull out the page and lay it flat on the table. A much younger version of Min’s mother smiles from the paper. 

I glance at Juilliard, who looks lost in thought. “This is Virginia.”

He nods. 

I slide the paper back to him. I’m done prying through his memories. 

“I draw them so that I don't forget them,” he says, tucking the papers away. Min's face vanishes from my sight. “It keeps them alive for me.”

“Uh huh. So what I’m hearing is, you’re a human being who has emotions,” I say, “just like the rest of us.”

He gives me a fleeting grin. “Tell no one.”

…

We’ve been trapped here for five days, and I feel like I should be using this time to pick his brain about the project, but no questions come to me. I’m sure Sarah would have dozens about the technicalities of how the cloning system works, but I wouldn’t know what any of it meant, so I don’t bother asking. 

Besides, he’s got more questions for me. “Did Virginia ever give even the slightest hint that she knew what was happening to Min?”

I shrug. “Min didn’t even tell me. And I didn’t notice. So I’m clearly not the most observant.”

“What did she tell you she was doing on her birthdays?”

“She didn’t,” I say. “She just disappeared and wouldn’t answer questions the next day.” Something clicks into place in my brain. “Sarah’s party,” I whisper. 

Juilliard looks up. “What?”

“She missed a birthday party, an important one. It’s what got her completely ostracized from the rest of the class.” I’d never understood why she skipped it as a kid, but she would give me a vicious glare whenever I brought it up. Now I know. “They all thought she just bailed and started ignoring her.”

I do mean for it to be a punch, but I’m still slightly surprised when I see it land. And a little guilty. (This psychopath wrecked Min’s life, and I’m guilty because I'm telling him the consequences of his actions?) 

“If I’d known…”

“You’d, what, reschedule?” I shake my head. “No. You’d still have killed her.”

“I might have waited until after the party,” he snaps. Then, heavily, “No. I wouldn’t have. I didn’t let my emotions get in the way of my job then.”

“When did they start getting in the way?” I needle. 

He grimaces. “When my daughter demanded that we regenerate sixty-four codes instead of twenty.”

“Right.” Almost forgot that was Min’s idea. “Good thing she thought of that.”

“Well, she wasn’t going to stop at anything to save you.” 

I squint at him. “What?”

“She did it for you,” he says. “Did she not…tell you that?”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t for me. There were forty-three other people to bring back.”

“And I’m fully convinced that, had you survived, she would have moved on without them.”

_What?_

This is a pointless line of conversation. “Why’d you let her, anyway?”

“Because,” he says, “I owed her one.”

I snort. “You still owe her more than one.”

“Don’t worry.” He folds his arms and leans against the wall. “I intend to fix that.”

…

We’re at the tiny table, more rehydrated space food in front of us, when he starts laughing. Actually laughing, completely unprompted. I idly wonder if he’s begun to lose it. 

“You good?”

“It occurred to me,” he says, “that it’s been many years since I sat down and ate a meal with someone. And look at the circumstances. I’m a fugitive on a space station, one million years past the extinction of our home planet, with only my teenage daughter’s best friend for company.” He’s laughing again. Cackling. Totally lost it. Not that I can really blame him for going batshit, not after all of this nonsense. Anyone who isn’t losing it a little was already insane. 

“Could be worse,” I point out. “Could be Noah.”

He shakes his head. “I’m trying to picture meeting him as Min’s boyfriend, and not the child I spent ten years murdering.”

“I saw it when they started going out. Wasn’t that special, believe me.” 

He chuckles. He’s still chortling to himself about our insane situation like he hasn’t had forever to get used to it. We’ve had…not even ten months. A year ago, in my brain’s clock, I was hanging out with Min. It was July. We spent that entire summer as CITs at Starlight’s Edge, helping the counselors with the eight-year-olds, Min’s responsibility balancing my laid-back attitude. We always got to work together. The kids loved listening to our banter. 

I shake off the memory. This isn’t summer camp, it’s life or death. We’re dealing with seventeen-year-olds, not children. I’m not in charge anymore. By leaving Min, I’ve effectively transferred from CIT back to a third-grade camper. 

“If it helps,” Juilliard says lightly, interrupting my train of thought, “I would rather you be the one dating my daughter than Noah.”

I arch a brow. “Why’s that?”

“You didn’t shoot her in the back.”

I aim my fork at him in agreement. Dig it back into whatever the hell I’m eating. (Looks like meatloaf. Doesn’t taste like meatloaf. Space food is gross.) “My thoughts exactly.” 

…

It’s horrifying when he dies. 

He goes as he always planned, as he always wanted to. For Min. Always Min. 

I would too, if she let me. 

…

When we fall to Mars, Min won’t speak. Just walls herself in a cabin and hides. 

When she finally lets me in, she looks haunted. I hate adding another ghost to the ones that claim her, but it doesn’t seem right to keep anything from her anymore.  

“I met your father,” I say, taking her hands as she tugs at the ends of her too-long hair. 

She looks up at me, and her eyes still look a little dead, but they’re not bad enough that I start mentally digging a grave. I want to think of it as a new start. Like a regeneration chamber for her soul. 

That’s what gives me the idea.

“Yeah?” she says. She tries for a smile, but it looks twisted and wrong. “You guys talk about me?”

“Just a bit.” I don’t let go of her hands, and I wonder if I should tell her what I learned. 

_He really loved you._

_He learned how to draw, and he drew you._

_Everything he did, he did for you._  

But everything I think of, she innately knows already, or it won’t help her. So I squeeze her hand instead. “Yeah,” I say. “He was a good guy.”

She nods, and her eyes are red, but they’re not as red as they were yesterday, and maybe that’s a start.

… 

“You still got that code?” I ask. Voice commands are helpful with Skippy since I don’t know jack shit about coding. “The last one, for the Guardian of Nemesis 1? Juilliard Bolton?”

Skippy whirs. “Would you like to add this code to the regeneration process?”

I hesitate. _Would I?_

Is this what Min wants?

I think of Juilliard, leaning against that back wall. The pain in his eyes as he looked at the drawing. The light in his eyes when he talked about another world, one that didn’t end so suddenly. 

No. I’m done torturing the guy. I think I’ll leave him in peace. And I can always come back later. 

“No,” I say. “No, don’t add him. Just…save that code.”

“Code saved.”

_Okay._

It’s better this way. Better to give Min and Noah time to heal. 

Maybe I can heal, too.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: transtlanticism  
> twitter: bunkersilo


End file.
